Life in the 1500's -----
Anne Hathaway was the wife of William Shakespeare. She married at the age of
26. This is really unusual for the time. Most people married young, like
at the age of 11 or 12. Life was not as romantic as we may picture it.
Here are some examples:
Anne Hathaway's home was a 3 bedroom house with a small parlor, which was seldom
used (only for company), kitchen, and no bathroom. Mother and Father shared a
bedroom. Anne had a queen sized bed, but did not sleep alone. She
also had 2 other sisters and they shared the bed also with 6 servant girls.
(this is before she married) They didn't sleep like we do lengthwise but
all laid on the bed crosswise.
At least they had a bed. The other bedroom was shared by her 6 brothers
and 30 field workers. They didn't have a bed. Everyone just wrapped up in
their blanket and slept on the floor. They had no indoor heating so all
the extra bodies kept them warm. They were also small people, the
men only grew to be about 5'6" and the women were 4'8". SO
in their house they had 27 people living.
Most people got married in June. Why? They took their yearly
bath in May, so they were still smelling pretty good by June, although they were
starting to smell, so the brides would carry a bouquet of flowers to hide their
b.o. Like I said, they took their yearly bath in May, but it was just a big tub
that they would fill with hot water. The man of the house would get the
privilege of the nice clean water. Then all the other sons and men, then
the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the
water was pretty thick. Thus, the saying, "don't throw the baby
out with the bath water," it was so dirty you could actually lose someone
in it.
I'll describe their houses a little. You've heard of thatch roofs,
well that's all they were. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood
underneath. They were the only place for the little animals to get warm.
So all the pets; dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs, all
lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery so sometimes the
animals would slip and fall off the roof. Thus the saying, "it's
raining cats and dogs,"
Since there was nothing to stop things from falling into the house they
would just try to clean up a lot. But this posed a real problem in
the bedroom where bugs and other droppings from animals could really mess
up your nice clean bed, so they found if they would make beds with big
posts
and hang a sheet over the top it would prevent that problem. That's
where those beautiful big 4 poster beds with canopies came from.
When you came into the house you would notice most times that the floor
was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, that's where the
saying "dirt poor" came from. The wealthy would have slate
floors. That was fine but in the winter they would get slippery when they got
wet. So they started to spread thresh on the floor to help keep
their footing. As the winter wore on they would just keep adding it
and adding it until when you opened the door it would all start slipping
outside. SO they put a piece of wood at the entry way, a
"thresh hold".
In the kitchen they would cook over the fire, they had a fireplace in the
kitchen/parlor, that was seldom used and sometimes in the master bedroom.
They had a big kettle that always hung over the fire and every day they
would light the fire and start adding things to the pot.
Mostly they ate vegetables, they didn't get much meat. They would
eat the stew for dinner then leave the leftovers in the pot to get cold
overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew would
have food in it that had been in there for a month! Thus the rhyme:
peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days
old."
Sometimes they could get a hold on some pork. They really felt
special when that happened and when company came over they even had a rack
in the parlor where they would bring out some bacon and hang it to
show it off. That was a sign of wealth and that a man "could really bring
home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with
guests and they would all sit around and "chew the fat."
If you had money your plates were made out of pewter. Sometimes some of
their food had a high acid content and some of the lead would leach out
into the food. They really noticed it happened with tomatoes. So
they stopped eating tomatoes, for 400 years.
Most people didn't have pewter plates though, they all had trenchers, that
was a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. They never
washed their boards and a lot of times worms would get into the wood.
After eating off the trencher with worms they would get "trench
mouth." If you were going traveling and wanted to stay at an Inn they
usually provided the bed but not the board.
The bread was divided according to status. The workers would get the
burnt bottom of the loaf, the family would get the middle and guests would
get the top, or the "upper crust".
They also had lead cups and when they would drink their ale or whiskey.
The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days.
They would be walking along the road and here would be someone knocked out
and they thought they were dead. So they would pick them up and take them
home and get them ready to bury. They realized if they were too slow
about it, the person would wake up. Also, maybe not all of the people they were
burying were dead. So they would lay them out on the kitchen table
for a couple of days, the family would gather around and eat and drink and
wait and see if they would wake up. That's where the custom of
holding a "wake" came from.
Since England is so old and small they started running out of places to
bury people. So they started digging up some coffins and would take
their bones to a house and re-use the grave. They started opening
these coffins and found some had scratch marks on the inside.
One out of 25 coffins were that way and they realized they had still been
burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on
their wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and
tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all
night to
listen for the bell. That is how the saying "graveyard
shift" was made. If the bell would ring they would know that someone
was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer".
<amazing, eh?